If you’re going to shoot a series about live music, then you have to visit the Live Music Capital of the World — and that’s Austin, Texas. In a city where bands are plentiful, we chose Dirty River Boys for Concrete Country because of their undeniable enthusiasm and their appealing acoustic set-up.

Although the band formed in El Paso, Texas, the guys seem totally at ease in Austin. Fans and curious onlookers — and a couple of cute pups — crowded around during our shoot in Zilker Park, with the gleaming skyline in the distance. You might be able to spot the statue of Stevie Ray Vaughan, too.

In an interview after the performance, Nino Cooper talked about the band’s early gigs in El Paso.

“We definitely did create our sound, and I don’t think we knew we had created it,” he said. “These restaurants, these bars, these Sunday brunches, they didn’t have enough room. So we had to break it down to a couple of guitars and Travis [Stearns] got the Cajon. It kind of happened naturally for us. We didn’t see another band and think, ‘Hey, we want to be like them’ or anything like that. It happened naturally from the ground up.”